


Hiding in plain sight

by FallingFaintly



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith, Strike (TV 2017)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, F/M, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28613403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallingFaintly/pseuds/FallingFaintly
Summary: No one is truly unaware of how they feel, but Robin and Strike can't seem to drop the pretence.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61





	Hiding in plain sight

**Author's Note:**

> A request was made for a write up of Strike and Robin's thoughts when they meet at Lorelai's place in the second episode of Lethal White. I've kept it entirely within the TV series world, rather than any mixing with book canon, and the idea is that you could watch the scene and have an extra little window into their feelings. Episode 2, timestamp 34:53 if you want to play along.

Strike was comfortably zoned out, stretched out on Lorelai’s sofa in just his boxers and a long sleeved top. He was working his way through a bowl of cereal, the pain in his stump a dull throb, but considerably reduced by analgesics and not having to be strapped into the prosthetic. He was trying to ignore the persistent dull ache in his chest that wasn’t caused by anything physical and yet still somehow pressed painfully into him as he considered Robin spending the weekend with Matthew.  _ She was celebrating her anniversary. It was entirely right she do so.  _

He kept replaying the image of her sitting at the top table beside her new husband, her face a blank, joyless mask as he watched her, only comforted then, as now, by the food in front of him. And that first dance, when the reality of this definitive step really punched home and he couldn’t take any more, turning on his heel to escape the cloying image of a hope he didn’t even know how to acknowledge disintegrating forever.

He heard the door opening and managed a small smile as he saw Lorelai there, returning from the office with his holdall. The thought flashed through his mind that there was more comfort here than just food, but it burnt away a second later as she announced she had brought a guest with her, and Robin appeared behind her. Strike flinched upwards, the persistent dull ache still there, but suddenly mixed with a surge of something much sweeter. 

Lorelai handed him his stuff, but his main thought was to put his trousers on. For some illogical reason, it felt awkward to draw attention to the fact that he was comfortable in a state of undress in his girlfriend’s flat. 

Robin noticed his scrabble to cover his legs, and adjusted her gaze tactfully around the apartment. It was a nice place, she thought; very Lorelai. Classy in a shabby-chic, quirky vintage way. Lorelai offered her a drink, and in her desire to keep up the pretence of not being extremely aware that Strike was getting dressed and had even been naked in this apartment, she suggested anything, only thinking a second later that she wasn’t sure if that answer had quite the casual, unflustered effect she was aiming for. She felt off-balance, like she was on enemy territory, which was ridiculous, Lorelai was a lovely woman, not her enemy. 

She attempted to tamp down this sensation by diving straight into work, asking Strike if he had found Billy. Getting a break in the case would be something at least to offset the inexplicable frustration she felt at Strike now living with the glamorous Lorelai. They would always share a passion for the job if nothing else. She checked herself as she listened to his reply while he finished dressing. What else did she think they  _ would _ share?

“Take a seat,” he said, tossing his holdall aside and settling himself back into the sofa. She hesitated for the briefest of seconds before continuing to apprise him of her progress with the audio recordings from Geraint Winn’s office as she came to sit beside him. Strike couldn’t help noticing the shift from hesitation to conspiratorial excitement as he handed her the laptop, shuffling closer to her and she told him about the promising lead from the trustee of the Winn’s charity who had resigned, and they listened to the audio with its clear implication that Geraint had been embezzling charity funds. 

Robin cast a glance at Strike and their eyes met, his eyebrows quirking up in recognition that this was very useful information and a big break. The casual proximity of sitting so close on a sofa was something they both usually avoided, and now, in the subdued lighting of Lorelai’s flat and the blue from the laptop screen, the sound of Robin’s familiar voice confirming the thought in Strike’s head, it occurred to Strike that there were sound reasons why they did. It felt so right, and the ache in his chest managed to increase and be soothed at the same time. 

Suddenly, Lorelai appeared with Robin’s drink.

“That’ll put hairs on your chest!” She said brightly, and Robin took the drink with thanks, forcing a warm smile out, not relishing the pretty woman’s comment, feeling absurdly insecure and unfeminine. She emitted a small self-chiding sigh as she drank. _ It was just a phrase, something you say when you hand someone an alcoholic drink. Why did it matter? _ The drink was surprisingly pleasant, so she banished any notion of bad intent on Lorelai’s part and turned her attention back to the laptop, and Strike.

He hadn’t noticed Lorelai, still deeply absorbed in these new revelations, and he chewed his nail thoughtfully as Robin played the next clip, further evidence of Winn’s machinations against Jasper Chiswell. He was no longer looking at the jagged spikes of audioplay, he was transfixed by Robin, who was clearly as pleased as he was with this nugget of information that would keep hold of their client and his money. 

She played it down a little, and he sensed it came from that desire she had to impress him, rather than because she really didn’t think it was significant, and he heard himself almost leaping to reassure her that it was good. He threw in some mentoring advice about how to approach the former-trustee, and as he watched her nodding as she took another sip of her drink, he felt a wave of warm euphoria sweep through him, that ache in his chest feeling like the most exquisite pleasure. This was perfection, cosy at the close of a day, coming together to share what they’d learned, building something really worthwhile.

Robin felt a similar sense of contentment, and in her usual considerate manner, asked him how things were with him. As she turned to him she couldn’t help a double take at his expression, an intimacy there that she hadn’t been expecting, still so very aware they were sitting in his girlfriend’s flat. She pushed the sudden flush away as he leaned forward to fetch his own breakthrough, and she reminded herself he was just pleased to have some good news about the case, nothing more. 

He pulled a picture of Chiswell’s son, Freddie, out of a plain white envelope, leaning back in towards her, closer than he had been previously.  _ Nothing more _ , Robin repeated, but when he pointed out Freddie’s lapel-pin and his face was bright with that eagerness she knew was reflected in herself, she found it hard to tear her eyes away from him and towards what the lapel-pin clue had led him to on the laptop; a connection with Della and Geraint Winn’s only child, Rhiannon Winn, who had killed herself.

The distressing thought of how Freddie humiliated Rhiannon, the word ‘Whore’ painted on her bare upper back, the terrible end of Rhiannon’s life, and the possibility that Freddie had done even more unspeakable things wasn’t even the worst thing that Strike and Robin had ever discussed in hushed tones, and Robin was relieved that she still felt a sense of abhorrence for the darkness in human behaviour. But she was also keenly conscious of how close Strike was leaning in to her, and how much she enjoyed this mutual decoding of mysteries and throwing together theories. 

Strike was warming to his theme, bringing in his memories of how Freddie Chiswell’s men hated him; his deep voice, low and intimate in the dim lighting. He watched her face, a little furrow in her brow as she thought of next steps in pursuing that part of the case they knew could blow everything else up. He was aware that he had no obvious ideas for that, but he was also aware that he had leaned right into her personal space, and that for a few seconds, it hadn’t felt like an overreach. In the moment it took for them to both consider possible moves in the case, they both realized other possible moves had loomed dangerously into view. Robin’s eyes dipped down to Strike’s mouth unconsciously. His did the same, flicking down and back up and holding her gaze for an impossibly long moment. 

The ache in his chest was threatening to crush him and he dimly registered that if he kissed her she’d taste of the pink concoction Lorelai had given her, and the thought of Lorelai should have dragged him out of this moment, but it was Robin remembering where she was that did, not Strike. Robin couldn’t even say why she’d wanted to close the distance between them, but in the time it took for her to register that they had stopped talking about the case and had instead fallen into a silence, not comfortable, but crackling with something that threatened to consume them, it hit her that she was in Lorelai’s flat, on Lorelai’s sofa and that Lorelai was Strike’s girlfriend, and she pulled herself out of the dangerously compelling trance.

“I better, um, I better, um,” she stammered, pulling herself up to standing. Strike felt the distance like a punch and his dismay registered on his face. Robin panicked. She wanted both to grasp that intimacy again and push it away because  _ this was his girlfriend’s flat. _

“I mean, I can come back tomorrow if you…,” she managed.

Reality dawned on Strike and he felt the pleasure in the ache ebb away and leave him with the pain again.  _ She had just come back from her anniversary weekend. She was married to another man. _

“Was it a good weekend?” He asked, conversationally.  _ It was the right thing to do.  _

“Yeah, it was ok,” she lied, her mind suddenly full of an unwelcome image of lying on her back as Matthew finished. She couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that her mind then had been full of the embrace on the stairs with the man who sat in front of her.  _ What would that mean? _ “Right. See you when I see you.”

“Yep,” Strike returned, willing time to turn back to the stone stairs himself, and the feel of her nestled into his neck and all the things he had wanted to say that should have begun with “Don’t stay…”

“Thank you, Lorelai,” Robin said as she hastened to the door without looking back, her cheeks burning.

“Bye darling,” Lorelai said warmly, and Strike watched his girlfriend pause before turning to him. He returned her veneer of breeziness with a slight, tired smile, and he sighed heavily back into the painful ache in his chest, pretending not to know what would make it better.

All he could do was think about Robin walking away as he sat, hobbled by more than just physical disability, in the flat of a woman he didn’t love, wondering why Robin left him so bereft when she wasn’t there.


End file.
